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Post by quaco on Sept 29, 2022 19:59:09 GMT
Maybe I'll change my view one day, but I don't really like Transformer. I don't think Lou is served by this sort of treatment, and/or I don't believe him and it's a con. Must have been interesting for DB and Ronno to work on an album like this, with a hero like Lou. It's alright but it's just sort of sugar-coated, like someone wanted to be able to market Lou to the glam-rock crowd and he went along with it. I prefer Berlin for a produced work, or something like Take No Prisoners for the real Lou Reed. Yeah, I get what you mean. It's an outlier, it lacks the grit and the NYC attitude of pretty much everything else he put out. I'm sure I read somewhere that he was virtually incoherent for most of the time this was produced, lying in a corner of the studio catatonic, they had to throw water over him so he'd get up for the vocal! but then Charlie posted that early version of 'Perfect Day' with just Lou and acoustic guitar, so he really wrote it himself, all those complex chord changes, and it's a hell of an achievement. He had enough about him for that, at least. I'll buy that. Songs don't write themselves and there are some great ones there, so kudos to him on that. |
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Sept 29, 2022 20:12:55 GMT
Transformer seems like an extension of Loaded to me. He’s trying to do solo what he tried to do with the Velvets. Crossover.
I’m completely down with that.
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Post by Charlie O. on Sept 30, 2022 1:53:59 GMT
Maybe I'll change my view one day, but I don't really like Transformer. I don't think Lou is served by this sort of treatment, and/or I don't believe him and it's a con. Must have been interesting for DB and Ronno to work on an album like this, with a hero like Lou. It's alright but it's just sort of sugar-coated, like someone wanted to be able to market Lou to the glam-rock crowd and he went along with it. I totally get this view, and held it myself for years. One day it occurred to me for the first time that Transformer is a concept album of sorts - that nearly every song is about (or can be read to be about) the masks that people wear, the personae that they adopt, whether to hide their true selves or to find their true selves or even just to live with themselves day to day. And those moments when they have to let the mask slip, at least a little ("Perfect Day", the end of "NY Telephone Conversation"). The cover figures into the concept,as does the production; whether it was by design or just dumb luck, Bowie and Ronson were the ideal choices to apply that sugar-coating... which Lou's ultimately un-sugar-coatable voice and words undercut with perfect imperfection. I'm glad he never tried to make another one like this (though Sally Can't Dance, which he hated and I love, was almost a grotesque parody of it, albeit without the conceptual through-line), but I'm glad he made this one. |
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Post by "BING E BONG" on Sept 23, 2024 16:17:32 GMT
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Post by Charlie O. on Sept 23, 2024 16:42:08 GMT
How does it not have "Burnt Out Affair", the (rather good) outtake included in the last reissue?
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